Eurydice

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice is a retelling of the classic Greek myth of Orpheus who braves a trip to the underworld to save his beloved, Eurydice, only to lose her all over again. Only this play takes Eurydice as the main character, and explores the love between a daughter and a long dead father as well as romantic love. The text is poetic and musical. We were blessed to be working with a talented composure, Pornchanok Kanchanabanca, to create music that supported the text’s inherent rhythms and images. My challenge as a movement coach was to support the rhythms and images in the text through the actor’s bodies without overwhelming or overcomplicating the child-like simplicity of the characters as they discover love and loss over and over again. There was some visible movement work in the production- an East Coast swing, a large lift, some violence, and a Pina Bausch inspired entrance for our chorus of stones, and much of my work on this production was subtle helping the actors create stillness, timing, and breath work to support the lyrical quality of the play.

Director’s Note: “Our production is an elegy – a poetic symphony of love, loss and memory with a whimsical nod to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. According to Chinese legend, a red thread of fate binds two people who are destined to be together. So it is in Eurydice. We explore the fragile connection of young love in this humorous and profound adaptation of the classic myth.”
—Helene Kvale